EnterpriseDB has announced the results (PDF) of its recent survey of open
source database usage.

While the company understandably highlights the adoption of
PostgreSQL for transaction-intensive applications and its high
reliability and performance and scalability EnterpriseDB has done
a pretty good job of presenting the results in an unbiased
manner.

I couldn’t help feeling that some of the more interesting results
are hidden at the end of or buried …

EnterpriseDB announced the results of the survey they did a few months ago at OSCON.
Now, take the results with a grain of salt as it was done by
EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB is based on Postgres so there is a
vested interest in making Postgres sound good. Results can be
skewed depending on how the survey is worded, what options are
available as answers and who the respondents are.

I?ve been reading The Bee Keeper (also here in PDF), an explanation of the
relationship between professional open source software (POSS)
vendors and their communities, written by Pentaho?s CTO James
Dixon. It is a very elegant explanation of the
development/business model employed by the POSS vendors such as
MySQL, Pentaho, JBoss and Alfresco.

I?ve already taken a look at MySQL?s changing business model and the potential business drivers behind the company
considering introducing new functionality under to Enterprise
customers only. One area that I didn?t dive into was the impact
on the company?s development model.

This, in fact, was the focus of Jeremy Cole?s initial take on the
news as well as a significant response from Marten Mickos. ?MySQL
will start …

Day two of the conference was a little disappointing, as far as
sessions went. There were several time blocks where I simply
wasn’t interested in any of the sessions. Instead, I went to the
expo hall and tried to pry straight answers out of sly
salespeople. Here’s what I attended.

Paying It Forward: Harnessing the MySQL Contributory Resources

This was a talk focused on how MySQL has made it possible for
community members to contribute to MySQL. There was quite a bit
of talk about IRC channels, mailing lists, and the like. However,
the talk gave short shrift to how MySQL plans to become truly
open source (in terms of its development …

As a I
wrote a couple of days ago, I went to the second day of PostgreSQL
Conference East 2008 last Sunday. I had a good time and
really enjoyed meeting everyone, listening, learning, and
occasionally talking. I asked a number of fearless-newbie
questions that paid off handsomely: people were very willing to
humor me. I also left with a beautiful t-shirt, mug, and bag
combo thanks to EnterpriseDB. The bag has already been put to use
for a grocery shopping trip.

Well, it's taken over a year but it has finally arrived. I
started writing the book back in Aug 2006. I finished in late Jan
2007 and the technical editor finished his work in March. Now, In
Jan 2008, EnterpriseDB: The Definitive Reference is
available. I'm glad I didn't wait for the movie. ;-)

It's kind of ironic. Just this morning, I posted that I am
working on my second book. My wife called me at work and told me
two boxes of books had arrived. 2008 is turning …

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